Leave Entitlement
I am not Admin Guru! I am hower an Adminer stuck in the Desert who wishes to contribute to your debate in hopefully a constructive manner. First of all, and not just because I am intruding into an Aircrew forum I fully accept that if Admin screw up we deserve a slap. I have been doing this job for a few years and know that our role is to support the operators, hence this reply. The advice given above about making sure your leave app gets to SHQ is spot on if you need to claim for Nugatory Holiday Expenditure which is the name of the scheme that re-imburses you when the MOD requires you to go somewhere at short notice and that a normal insurance policy won't cover you for. The idea is that if the system screws up your hols you shouldn't dip out all ways round because your insurance won't cover the risk. The reason the leave needs to be in is because, unfortunately, and I am afraid its true, some individuals have abused the system. Now in an ideal world we should all be trusted to play the game but because of problems in the past the MOD (SP Pol to be precise) have dictated that a pre-cursor for payment is that the leave must have been approved, hence the need to get your App in to SHQ. Top tips for getting approval for payments are a copy of the leave pass, a copy of the cancellation or letter from the boss explaining why you had to go, a copy of your insurance and a letter from the Insurance saying they won't pay. This should mean that the MOD covers the bill if the deployment is a short-notice deployment to an operational area that insurance won't normally cover. For every day cover may I suggest that you consider taking out one of the policies alluded to above by NAAFI etc who do make a point of covering short notice military cancellations that are not payable under NHE - its one of their selling points. There are several around and most are advertised periodically in the RAF news. The combination of one of these policies in tandem with NHE should mean you are never out of pocket for cancelled holidays. With regard to leave apps and weekends the reason SAMA won't take the weekend days is because leave now is only counted for Mon to Fri which I know is b**l*cks because you work weekends but for the majority of the Service that is the normal working week and thats the system. I can't defend it I'm just explaining it. The reason for the Stats chase is political because I guess the system wants it all ways round, you everywhere and all leave taken, therefore happy punters. Unless you get the apps endorsed denied for service reasons people will never work out that there is a big problem with over stretch - therefore get the apps in to SHQ once again. Hope this helps, standing by to be pilloried! P.s. I inherited the log In name from a predecessor who told me all about the site so apologies to him for using his Log in.